Publish’d according to Act of Parliament
The View of the scaffold with
the Guards Surrounding
at the time of Execution

A Perspective View of TOWER HILL and the Place of Execution of the Lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino on Monday 18 of August 1746

In the meantime Lord Balmerino was waiting for his own end with that imperturbable courage which never seemed to desert him. He talked cheerfully with his friends, and drinking a glass of wine, blithely asked them to drink to his “ain degrae ta haiven.” When the under-sheriff came to summon him to the scaffold the old lord interrupted him by asking how the executioner had done his work upon Lord Kilmarnock, and remarking that it was well done, turned to his friends and said, “Gentlemen, I shall detain you no longer,” immediately proceeding to the scaffold, “which he mounted with so easy an air as astounded the spectators.” He wore the uniform in which he had fought at the battle of Culloden, a blue coat turned up with red, with brass buttons, and a tie wig. Having walked several times round the scaffold, he bowed to the people, and going up to the coffin lying ready to receive his body, he read the inscription, saying, “It is right”; then he carefully examined the block which he called his “pillow of rest.” He required his spectacles to read the speech he had prepared, and “read it with an audible voice, which, so far from being filled with passionate invective, mentioned his Majesty as a prince of the greatest magnanimity and mercy, at the same time that, thro’ erroneous political principles, it denied him a right to the allegiance of his people.” This speech was duly handed over to the Sheriff, and when the executioner came forward to beg Lord Balmerino’s pardon, as was the custom, the staunch old nobleman said, “Friend, you need not ask me forgiveness, the execution of your duty is commendable!” Then he gave him three guineas, adding, “Friend, I never was rich, this is all the money I have now, and I am sorry I cannot add anything to it but my coat and waistcoat.” These he himself placed upon his coffin, together with his neckcloth, and putting on a plaid cap, declared that he died a Scotchman. He next bade farewell to his friends, and then looking down upon the crowd said to a gentleman who stood near him, “Perhaps some may think my behaviour too bold, but remember, sir, that I now declare it is the effect of confidence in God, and a good conscience, and I should dissemble, if I should shew any signs of fear.” As he passed the executioner he took the axe from his hand and felt the edge, and, returning it to the man, clapped him on the shoulder to encourage him. Turning down the collar of his shirt he showed the man where to strike, bidding him “do it resolutely, for in that would consist his kindness.” After giving the Tower warders some money, he asked which was his hearse, and ordered the driver to bring it nearer. “Immediately,” says the writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, “without trembling, or changing countenance, he again knelt at the block, and having with his arms stretched out, said, ‘O Lord, reward my friends; forgive my enemies—and receive my soul,’ he gave the signal by letting them fall, but his uncommon firmness and intrepidity, and the unexpected suddenness of the signal, so surprised the executioner, that though he struck the part directed, the blow was not given with strength enough to wound him very deep; on which it seemed as if he made an effort to turn his head towards the executioner, and the under jaw fell and returned very quick, like anger and gnashing the teeth; but it could not be otherwise, the part being convulsed. A second blow immediately succeeding, the first rendered him, however, quite insensible, and a third finished the work. His head was received in a piece of red baize, and with his body put into the coffin, which, at his particular request, was placed on that of the late Marquis of Tullibardine in St Peter’s Chapel Church in the Tower, all three Lords lying in one grave.”

A _True_ Representation of TOWER-HILL, as it Appear’d from a rais’d point of View on the North side, Augṭ ye 18th. 1746, when the Earl of Kilmarnock and the Lord Balmerino were Beheaded.

At the close of that year the brother of the ill-fated Earl of Derwentwater, Charles Radclyffe, was also executed on the same spot. He came very gallantly to the scaffold dressed “in scarlet trimm’d with gold, a gold laced waistcoat, and white feathers in his hat.” He was actually Earl of Derwentwater, his coffin in St Giles’s in the Fields bearing the inscription, “Carolus Radclyffe, Comes de Derwentwater, decollatur, 8 Dec. 1746, Ætis 53. Requiescat in Pace.” But although the Derwentwater estates had only been confiscated to the Crown for his life a clause in a later Act of Parliament directed that “the issue of any person attainted of High Treason, born and bred in any foreign dominion, and a Roman Catholic, shall forfeit his reversion of such estate, and the remainder shall for ever be fixed in the Crown, his son is absolutely deprived of any title or interest in the fortune of that ancient family to the amount of better than £200,000.” Charles Radclyffe, was the younger brother of James, Earl of Derwentwater, and with him had been taken prisoner at Preston, and condemned to death after trial and conviction. But he had been respited, and it was thought would ultimately have been pardoned, had he not escaped from his prison in Newgate. He went to France, and following the Pretender to Rome, was given a small pension by that prince, and this was literally all that he had to live upon. Later, he returned to Paris, and there he married the widow of Lord Newburgh, by whom he had a son. He came to England in 1733, but went back again to France and accepted a commission from Louis XIV., “to act as officer in the late rebellion.” But before he could reach Scotland on board the Esperance, he, his men, and several other Scotch and Irish officers were captured by an English vessel, and Charles Radclyffe ended his unfortunate career as intrepidly as he had lived it, on Tower Hill.

By this time the axe had almost done its work in England, and Tower Hill was to see only one more head laid upon the block—that of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, who was the last of the Jacobite lords to be executed. Lord Lovat’s long life had begun in 1667, and it had been as wild and vicious as it had been lengthy. Like the Regent Orléans, he might very justly have been called a “fanfaron de vice.” In his youth he had lived in Paris, where he had become a Roman Catholic, if such a man as Lovat could be said to have any religion. He enjoyed what was probably a unique experience in that he was imprisoned both in the Bastille and in the Tower, for although there is no authority for saying that he was the only man who underwent imprisonment in the great State prisons of England and of France, on the other hand, there is also no authority for saying that he was not. He had been in the Bastille in 1702, on the charge of having betrayed a Jacobite plot to the English Government. Although not actually in arms during the “’45” rebellion, Lovat had kept up a correspondence with the Young Pretender; and this correspondence cost him his life. When captured at the Isle of Moran, after the Battle of Culloden, he was so infirm that he had to be carried to Edinburgh in a litter, and thence in the same way to Berwick, and so to London.

The Effigie of the late CHARLES RATCLIFFE Esqr. who was beheaded on little Tower Hill, Monday Decemr 8th. 1746. for being concern’d in the Rebellion in the Year 1745.

It was at the White Hart at St Albans that Hogarth met him, and there it was that great artist painted the admirable little full-length portrait of the old Jacobite, which is now in the National Portrait Gallery. Hogarth used to say that he painted Lovat as he sat counting up the numbers of the rebel forces on his fingers. The engraving of this portrait, taken by the artist himself, had an immense success at the time, the printing press being kept employed day and night, and for a considerable time Hogarth made twelve pounds a day by its sale.